Summary:

CheeTung Leong interviews Sara Warren, the VP of HR at Norwex USA, about the art and science of asking questions in leadership. Sara emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions to understand the knowledge and perspective of employees, rather than assuming what they know or don't know. She shares practical tips for leaders to improve their questioning skills, such as planning ahead with specific questions, being clear and concise, and challenging themselves to respond with questions instead of solutions. By fostering a collaborative and curious mindset, leaders can create a culture of growth and innovation within their teams.

Key Takeaways:

Asking the right questions helps leaders understand the knowledge and perspective of employees.

Questions should be concise, specific to the topic, and tailored to the individual's knowledge level.

Leaders should ask questions to engage in dialogue and foster collaboration, rather than simply giving orders.

Planning ahead with a list of questions and challenging oneself to respond with questions can improve leadership skills.

Asking questions creates a culture of growth, innovation, and trust within teams.

Chapters:

0:01:31 Pride in watching employees grow and develop

0:04:52 Myth of HR being the "boogeyman" and the role of HR in problem-solving

0:06:39 Importance of asking questions to understand knowledge levels

0:10:19 Overcoming the belief that leaders should have all the answers

0:13:07 Training and coaching can help people ask better questions.

0:16:55 Leaders should maintain curiosity and self-awareness in crisis situations.

0:20:08 Plan ahead and have specific questions ready for different situations.

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Sara Warren: linkedin.com/in/sarawarrensphr

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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And in our studio today, we have our guest, Sara Warren. Sara is the Vice President of Human Resources at Norwex USA whose mission it is to promote a cleaner, safer way of living by reducing harmful chemicals in everyday lives. Now today, we're going to be talking about the art and science of asking questions.

What is it that leaders and HR leaders need to know? Welcome to the show, Sara.

Sara Warren: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here

CheeTung Leong: Thank you, and tell us a little bit more about what Norwex does and what it is that you do at Norwex.

It's great having kind of that bigger purpose. We grow the individuals, we grow the teams, we come up with great ideas and contribute to a cleaner, safer, better world.

CheeTung Leong: What I love about Norwex is that brand statement is so clean. It's jargon free, no BS, and it tells me something about the culture at Norwex and what it, values.

When you think about your role so far, you've been in this company for a while. What is, the achievement that you think you're most proud of?

And that's been the great thing about being with Norwex is as the company has grown, we've put a lot of time and investment into our people to make sure that the people grow with the company. So it's really been a great fun to watch and really special something to be a part of while we're still contributing.

To this bigger mission. And I, think that's also something to the heart of who we are. As we do what we say, we're going to do, we believe in what we believe. It's not something that we just put on a website. It's something that we do in our everyday lives and something we do every day at the company and pulling all of that together.

And so a great organization with incredible people has really been a dream.

With that, what do you say is your moonshot goal? For next year.

Sara Warren: We've got so many great programs that we're working on for next year. We are really took a look in 23, we did a great assessment and evaluation of our HR department and all of the paper. And that's not really who we are as a company. So we've gone digital. I am staring at empty filing cabinets in an office.

So we're really excited for 24 will be bringing a lot of great things.

CheeTung Leong: That sounds awesome. Now, what is the leadership or HR myth that you wish would just go away?

Sara Warren: It's always fun when you walk around the office on a Friday afternoon and everyone turns the corner and where are you going, where are you going, is there a box in her hand? No, not me or when they come and they, share that problem or concern with you and they're like I didn't want to come and talk to HR, but at this point I feel like I have to no, we are here, we are here to make sure that you have what you need, you have the resources that you need and to help you problem solve.

There are a lot of individuals that come to me with issues and challenges and their work life. And I help them problem solve. I help coach them through it and give them the skills that they need to maybe see a little bit of a different perspective and tackle the problem on their own. It's not necessarily always you come to HR and someone's going to get in trouble or someone's going to be let go.

CheeTung Leong: I think that's a great point. So often it's, so easy to make HR like the boogeyman.

Sara Warren: Yes,

we're not the boogeyman. We don't walk around on Friday with a empty cardboard box, or now a virtual box looking to see who we're going to let go today. It's not really how that works.

CheeTung Leong: I think one of the toughest jobs about HR is that you're almost always the face of bad news.

Sara Warren: That's true, but we have to balance that and make sure that we're also the face of good news and making sure that we're working with the managers. And that's where a lot of times when there's good news, HR will take a step back, but that's really sometimes where you have to take a step forward and work with the manager.

Let the manager celebrate, let the manager wear the golden medal and enjoy those achievements and stand next to them and smile. We're there with them and celebrating.

But when you're helping leaders take that forefront, and be that face and that conduit between employees and the organization as they rightly should. One of the things that we've spoken about is that it's really important for leaders to understand how to ask questions.

Because there's both an art to this and a science to this. So why, would you say that questions are so important in leadership?

Sara Warren: You don't know what you don't know. So it's okay to ask and ask the question in the right way. So as an example, if I say, Hey, do you know how to tie your shoes? That employee is going to look at you and be like, are you kidding me? Do you think I'm two years old?

And they might look at you and go, yeah, actually I do. And then they're proud of that knowledge. And they're excited and they want to share that with you. Or they might look at you and go, there's a way to tie shoes for ankle support. What? And then it gives you that opportunity to understand where they are.

And then from there you can help them grow. So you don't assume that they know everything, but you can assume that they know nothing either. You want to be really concise. You want to be specific to that topic. And then really listen and categorize that knowledge level. So when they say, yes, I do know how to tie shoes, great ankle support, you can go awesome.

Can you go, please go and help the team because we need to make sure that these are all tied correctly or cool do you know other ways of tying shoes also? And maybe they say yes, and then they can teach you a thing or two. So you never want to assume that they know can't assume that they don't know either.

CheeTung Leong: So Sara, where do you find that leaders struggle the most with this?

Sara Warren: I really find leaders struggling when it's in that crisis mode, right? You get into that crisis mode, you get into that crisis panic, and they freak out. Oh my gosh, what's going on? Who's doing what? And they start calling people and they go, do this, And the employee goes, okay, .

That question allows a dialogue. It gives the employee the opportunity to say, yes. And what about this? And what about that? And add to it. And sometimes as a leader, you go, Oh, good point. I didn't think about that because as a leader, you're up high you're in the clouds, you're in that 6, 000 foot view.

So when you ask him those questions start with that dialogue It gives them the opportunity to ask questions back and be part of the team then they can learn and grow together

CheeTung Leong: Yeah, this is really interesting because it sounds almost like the art of asking questions in these cases is really about figuring out how to lead collaboratively. And that can be a struggle for leaders because I can imagine, I know personally of some old school leaders who believe that they should actually have all the answers.

And they're not leaders unless they are the ones who know what to do in all cases. Do you, fight against that in any way?

They're not going to be innovative. They're not going to come to you and go, Hey, boss, I've got a great idea. What if we did this differently? You know what? That is a great idea. Let's try that. You have to be collaborative with them so they can grow and they can shine. And once they get into it a little bit, maybe it's a new task, a new area, something they haven't done before.

Yeah. If they have questions, they'll come to you with them. If you create this, you have to do this and you have to do that. They're not going to come to you with questions. If you ask them basic questions like, Hey, do you know how to tie your shoes? They're going to think, Oh my gosh, they think I'm so silly.

In HR, you see this a lot with payroll, right? You hire that really good payroll tax person. Now, sometimes payroll's in accounting and I get that too, but we all work with payroll. So you hire that really good payroll tax person because oftentimes as HR leaders, we don't know all the payroll tax things, but we know enough to ask the right questions and help that person grow.

It's the same thing, whether it's in payroll tax or digital marketing or IT, it's the same concept across the board.

CheeTung Leong: That makes a lot of sense. It reminds me of one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes where he talks about hiring great people. Not to tell them what to do, but so that they can tell him what to do. You only can unlock that If you're asking questions in an intelligent way, in a way that doesn't demean the intelligence of the people under you and there's also a very sneaky, passive aggressive way of asking questions, which I think you alluded to earlier, which again is something that leaders need to step away from.

And because I can't even imagine how you would go about training and coaching people around asking good questions.

Sara Warren: It can be trained and coached. Yes, they're going to have some people that's just their DNA and that's how they operate. And of course they're going to have a little bit of a leg up, but you absolutely can train and coach it. One, talk to your team. My team knows I ask a lot of questions.

And sometimes they'll say, I'm asking because I don't know the answer. This isn't a quiz show. I'm asking because I don't know the answer because sometimes they'll think, Oh my gosh, I'm being quizzed. I'm being challenged. No, I'm asking because I need to know. But you want to ask the right question.

Just instead of starting at square one, start at square five. If they're a higher level person, start at square ten. Start with strategy. And if they look at you and they're completely confused, take some steps down. If they roll with you, take some steps up. It helps you identify where they are with that topic.

For people, we don't know everything. We don't know everything. It's okay to say, I'm asking because I don't know the answer. That's just part of it. They'll get used to that style after a while. In the beginning, sometimes they feel a little interrogated. But that's where you just tell them, I'm asking because I don't know.

Didn't this come up a few weeks ago? What did we do then? I don't remember. Oh you're right. But in that case, these other things happened too. Okay let's guard against that and it can also help them understand. Remember that process we used before? We're going to use the same process here.

If you say it that way, you're going to get mad. So what you say is, didn't we do this before? How did we do that? I don't remember. here's what we did. Cool. Let's try that.

That's, so great. How do you go about keeping that frame of mind as you go through your day to day because, I'm, sensing that as a leader, what this means is probably some baseline layer of curiosity, baseline layer of, self awareness and a baseline layer of okay, we're all in this together. We're a team, we're collaborative, but I've been in situations as a leader where, things are hitting the fan and you don't have those layers and you're in crisis mode. You're trying to fix things. How, have you seen yourself work with leaders and help them pull themselves out of that kind of mindset and maintain that baseline level of curiosity?

Have we come across this before? What did we do last time? What are some things that we can try? If the team is just looking at you with blank stares and they're like, I don't know, I don't have any ideas, then you can throw out different questions. What if we did this? That might work. And then sometimes someone else in the team will go, but hold on, that might mess up this other thing over here.

Okay how is it going to impact that? All right. How do we guard against that? And it really drives that dialogue. And then through that dialogue, the answer will pop up. And sometimes as a leader, you got to get onto the next thing. So you'll go, okay, so what I'm hearing is if we do this, and this, then we should really guard against that.

And you're thinking, really? How does she know that? Cool. Okay. Yeah. Let's hear it. Of course you don't say those thoughts outwardly, but it also shows you that those other team members are growing and learning too. Maybe it was something they dealt with in their last job. You wouldn't have known you weren't there.

So really going into that crisis management mode with a clear head, a couple of written down questions so you go in and know where your starting base is. And that also takes away that fear of failure. When you take away that fear of failure, people are willing to do more things. If they think they're walking into a who screwed up and who's getting in trouble today scenario, lips will be sealed.

What's going on? What happened? Where are we? How do we fix it? And then assign ownership to someone to complete that task. Or sometimes you might have to take it up to your leadership. However, that works best in your organization.

CheeTung Leong: Everybody on to a common understanding of what happened, without assigning blame. I think that, anyway in itself is critical of a problem solving, so you need to do that anyway.

So as a leader, that's one of the things that I'm just reflecting on myself, like how have I approached crises in the past and how, can I then move forward and use this knowledge better in future crises, which hopefully don't show up. But they always do. Yeah, I'm getting coached from this conversation.

I love it. Thanks, Sara.

Sara Warren: Absolutely. First things first, plan ahead, write down a couple of questions that you know make sense in your organization. Maybe it's problems that come up all the time. Maybe it's just those basic crisis management problems of what do we know? What happened? Has this happened before? What did we do about it last time?

If you have them written down so they're somewhere in front of you, whether they're on a post it note on your desk or a digital post it note on your desktop, when you go into those situations, you can reflect on those questions and you can use them. It also keeps them there in front of you, so when that employee walks in and says, what do I do?

So if you're new to this, think through what those questions would be that apply in a lot of situations. But I'm on a note somewhere where you see them all the time and start integrating those in your brain. When things start happening, refer back to that before you have that conversation and then challenge yourself.

The next time that employee comes to you, instead of responding with the solution, Respond with a question. And that question could be, tell me more about it. How else can I help? How can I help? What can I do? How can I best support you? There are a lot of very generic questions that will get you to those answers and engage that dialogue.

It may feel really weird and strange at first. But I promise with a little bit of preparation, a few reminders, you'll absolutely get there. And then you'll start seeing that dynamic shift within your team. And you can apply that to other teams as well.

Sara Warren: Just reach out on LinkedIn. Sara Warren, I believe it's Sara Warren SPHR cause there's a few of us in the world. So feel free to reach out on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. I am always more than happy to help.

CheeTung Leong: Wonderful, thank for hanging with us today Sara. And for those who are listening, I hope you enjoyed the show. If you want to get more great content like this, head over to engagerocket.co/hrimpact where we showcase the latest podcast, the latest conversations we've had with top leaders like Sara sharing their expertise with you.

This is all we got for today, so thank you so much for listening to the HR Impact Show. My name is C. T. Take care and peace out